


My Favorite What-If

by dancinbutterfly



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Military, Alternate Universe - Modern: No Powers, Alternate Universe - Teachers, Canon Disabled Character, Darcy&Bucky Friendship, Deaf Clint Barton, Epistolary, Falling In Love, Hearing Aid-using Clint Barton, Jewish Bucky Barnes, Letters, M/M, Nat&Bucky Friendship, Pen Pals, Salty!Bucky, Social Worker Clint Barton, Teacher Bucky Barnes, Teacher Darcy Lewis, Teacher Natasha Romanov, eventually explicit
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-23
Updated: 2016-05-27
Packaged: 2018-04-16 18:11:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4635174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dancinbutterfly/pseuds/dancinbutterfly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Former-soldier-turned-high-school-science-teacher Bucky Barnes was just tired of the school making a fuss over him every Veteran's Day. He figured redirecting the schools attention towards the actual troops would be a better use of their energy. He never expected the gesture to get the attention of one Captain Steve Rogers. Now the man wants to exchange letters and Bucky is in over his head. Way over.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I noticed that there were a few civilian!Steve writing soldier!Bucky fics but couldnt find any that flipped the script. This fic attempts to fill that hole. Also I want to try and write some Bucky POV. The teaching stuff is written from my memories of high school and my experience as a long-term substitute so forgive me any inaccuracies. My degree is in English not science. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy.

Bucky only organizes the fucking thing because he is so goddamn tired of the school making a fucking to-do over him every Veteran's Day. Okay, he was a Ranger. Okay, he lost his arm in service to his country. Okay he's the only fucking vet who works at this fucking place but goddamnit he is not going to be the holiday poster boy not one more year. 

Maria Stark High School doesn't even have a ROTC progran for Christ's sake. The whole thing is just hollow showboating and he's not having it anymore. Nope. Not going to happen. Three years of the whole place making a fuss over his time in the Army was enough, thank you very fucking much. 

He explains this to Darcy in the teachers longue the Tuesday after the Labor Day holiday, already dreading it. They share a planning period, roughly the same group of twelth graders, and a hidden stash hairties that appear and disappear throughout the year. "So how are you going to get out of it? You know it's Vice Principal Odinson's favorite thing besides like…Halloween and," she pauses to make air quotes "The Winter Holidays."

Bucky makes a face. "So many paper decorations. The pumpkins. The snowflakes." He shudders. "You'd think any merciful God wouldn't allow things like that to happen."

"Hey, I dont know what mindwarpy magic he has over the SGA to get them so into decorating the halls but you and I both know that it cannot be stopped."

Bucky nods in resignation. "I just don't like being pushed out there like that. Leave me alone, you know? I just want to teach my kids to build rockets like every other fucking day in November. I mean, okay, we don't get to rockets until second semester unless they're in AP but you know what I mean."

"Preach," Darcy agrees, toasting him with her cup 'o noodles. "So, come up with some thing else."

"Like what?"

"I don't know. It's not my job to solve your problems. I have my own problems, like trying to convince my government students to actually learn about government. There's still three branches people. It's not that hard." She sighs. "I hate my life so much."

"Only three months till Thanksgiving."

"So much."

"I'll come up with something."

He doesn't. And doesn't. And doesn't until Laufeyson puts out auditions for the school play at the end of September. It's some epistolary drama from World War II that no sane person would ever make high-schoolers do. Not that anyone ever accused Laufeyson of being sane. Bucky is 100% convinced he only got the drama teacher gig because he's Odinson's brother. Darcy insists that he had an actual career in England, that she's seen some of his BBC dramas but he doesn't believe it. The guy is a fifteen pounds of melodrama in a five pound bag. 

Still it gives Bucky an idea. Back when he was serving, a few of the guys in his unit were part of some of those adopt-a-vet programs. They liked it, the ones that did it. They were single guys mostly, ones without families waiting back home. Bucky had his ma and Becca so he never did it himself but getting letters always made things easier, so fuck it right? A school full of letters would be even better than a handful. He could organize it with Nat. She could get the rest of the English department to make it into essay writing assignments or something, revise them and shit first.

He doesn't have a lot of time so he takes the idea to Thor the next day. Thor hugs him and maybe cries a little which always makes Bucky uncomfortable. He doesn't do well with unsolicited contact but the guy is a touchy-feel bastard so he just accepts it as best he can. 

Thor introduces it at the staff meeting the next Thursday. Nat and Wanda and the rest of the English department only glare at him only a little for giving them extra work. Nat actually takes him out for a drink after the meeting and while doesn't say she's proud of him, she does tug once on his ponytail which is basically the same thing.

The thing is, MSH is a private high school. Tony Stark set it up after his mom died so that underprivileged kids from the not so great parts of the city could get a chance at a better education with all the shiny new tech and a fully funded arts program and a curriculum that didn't teach to the test. Kids have to wear uniforms, which Stark pays for but would never endorse himself (Pepper Potts decided on that rule and everyone knows it). It's a small campus with small class sizes. But there are still over two thousand individual letters from kids of every grade to send when the project is finished. 

Bucky is more than a little stunned when they finally send them out. Stunned and yes, damnit, proud. He made something happen, something good for his fellow soldiers even without his arm and he can admit to himself it fills a hole he didn't know was there. 

But he figures that's it. Letters sent. Good deed done. Attention deflected. Back to life as usual at Maria Stark High. New mission: _Figure out how to convince his mother that no, really, he'd be fine, he didn't need to come to Florida for Thanksgiving, yes he really did have plans with Nat and Clint and he wouldn't starve, please don't sigh like that at me Ma, Jesus._

Then the card comes. It's made out of folded yellow legal pad paper and has a drawing of the school done on the front. The actual high school. It's impressive professional grade shit with a standard thank you for writing us message from 107th Infantry Regiment. The ITV crew film it and it's read aloud to everyone over morning announcements by a nervous tenth grader. 

Apparently, also a letter for him, personally. Thor comes to his classroom during his break period and places it face down on the table. "I tried not to read it," he says, "When I saw it was addressed to you, however I saw some of it. I hope you'll forgive the intrusion."

Bucky stares up at the big man from his seat behind his desk. The look on his face is gentle and warm and Bucky looks at him for the hundredth time since his hiring and thinks that this was the kind of guy who was supposed to be working with kids, not him. But he just nods. He's definitely curious and this is better than grading papers.

He gets as far as the first line and stops. It's addressed to Sergeant Barnes. How the actual fuck does a complete stranger know to call him that? And then he remembers that he drafted Natasha fucking Romanoff's AP classes into this mess in the first place and mentally kicks himself. Of course she wrote a letter too. Of course. 

He takes a deep breath and starts over. It's just a letter after all.

**Sergeant Barnes,**

**I wanted to thank you personally for organizing the effort to send the letters to my people. As a fellow soldier I'm sure you're familiar with the expression "months of boredom punctuated by moments of extreme terror" and I want you to know that these letters provided hours of interruption from the hurry up and wait of deployment. You and your students did us a real service and for that we'll always be grateful. It was a real kick to see inside those kids' heads and get to know them, see what they're learning and what they're interested in. A lot of their interests actually intersect with some of our own on a pop culture level in particular - music especially. My guys were making new playlists out of the stuff these students recommended for when we got back to base. I wasn't sure what was appropriate to put in the general letter so I thought I would put it in this message to you so that someone would know, even if the message can't be given to the whole school.**

**Speaking of appropriate, I want you to know that the letter Ms. Romanoff sent didn't say much about you, besides the fact that you spent time in the Army yourself, that the character of your discharge was honorable, that you're currently a science teacher, and that you're the one who put all this together. I'm writing you because even with that little you sound like a remarkable person and I'd like to get to know you better if you're interested in exchanging letters. I know it's hokey and old-fashioned but maybe you could use a pen-pal.**

**Anyway, I hope this reaches you well.**

**Take care,  
** **Capt. Steve Rogers**  
**107th Infantry Regiment**

Well shit. He can't just ignore that. Not from a captain. He's still to much of an army boy to let it slide, probably always will be. So he pulls a piece of college ruled paper out of his desk, the stash he keeps for the kids who forget their notebooks on test days, and tries to think of something to say.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky writes back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1)The High Holy Days(Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur) and I'm really feeling it this year which is why we have the sudden appearance of Jewish!Bucky. Jewish!Bucky is one of my favorite fandom tropes and I'm super excited to write him.  
> 2)Mandelbrot is a delicious nut-based cookie that is made for the High Holy Days and my mom's recipe is not a secret but she doesn't share it lightly.  
> 3)The Stacy Keach trebuchet [documentary](http://www.amazon.com/NOVA-Medieval-Siege-Stacy-Keach/dp/B0002TSZQK) is real yall. We watched it when I was in 8th grade 15 years ago and it was GLORIOUS. I have no idea why the hell it stuck with me so profoundly but it did so I used it here.

It takes him a solid three days to pull his thoughts together. When he does get something on paper, Bucky's letter goes a little something like this:

**Captain Rogers,**

**Glad the letters got to you. The guys in my unit always got a kick out of shit like that so I figured you would to.**

**So, hey, from now on just call me Bucky. I haven't been a sgt for a few years now. Just plain old Mr. Barnes around these hallowed halls and that works just fine for me.**

**Yeah. Science. Physics mainly — making shit move, calculating distance over time, that kind of thing. My students arent completely hopeless and we're in the process of building trebuchets so that’s be cool. Trebuchets, I'm sure you know, are like catapults only different. Stacy Keach narrates a pretty cool documentary on them that the kids seem to like. They like building them better. We have a contest the last day or two before winter break to see whose trebuchet can fling a marshmallow the farthest. Then we get to eat the marshmallows and there’s prizes and shit. It’s been working so far. Kids tend to actually pay attention better in class when its not all math. Not that there isn't a lot of math. There is.**

**Although I don't know why you'd care what a bunch of 17 yos are doing in science class but you wanted to be pen-pals and google told me that pen-pals tell each other about their lives so there it is. Math and trebuchets. Aside from Nat (who you referred to as Ms. Romanoff which you should never do again, or she’ll start getting ideas) trying to set me up all time that’s it. That’s me. No pets. My ma retired to Boca and my sister and her girlfriend sell donuts in Oregon. Very exciting is my life.**

**So, I guess tell me about you? Where you from? Why’d you join up? What do you do - that’ll get past the censors? I don’t know. I’m shit at this. Later.**

**Stay safe,  
Bucky**

He drops it in Darcy’s lap during planning period and collapses onto the couch. She looks down at the paper, up at him, down then back up again. “Are you trying to tell me something? Because you know you can tell me anything. You don’t have to write me a letter.”

“Just read it and tell me what you think.”

“Don’t you have friends in the English department?” Darcy asks sipping her coffee, still not looking down at the letter. “Isn’t your best friend the head of the English department?”

“Nat’s the reason I’m in this mess in the first place.”

“We have a mess?”

“Yes.”

Darcy beams at him. “Awesome. I love a good mess.”

Yeah. He knows. It’s why he came to her in the first place. That and the fact that he really can’t go to Nat with it because that means she’s won. She has won of course but she’ll know, is the thing. 

“Just read the fucking young thing.”

“Language,” Darcy tuts then giggles. She finally lifts the letter, skims it, snorts then pulls a pen out of her hair, which is a surprise because he didn’t see one hiding in there, and starts to cross things out. 

“Hey!”

“You kept saying shit in here. You can’t say shit when you’re talking to a stranger, Bucky. That’s third or fourth letter material. How hard is it to write ‘stuff’ instead.”

Bucky shrugs. It makes his left shoulder ache a little but he ignores it. “I don’t know. I just wrote what I was thinking as I thought it.”

“I can tell. I like the bit about the catapults.”

“Trebuchets.”

“Whatever. I like that part. I think he will too.” She glances at him over the paper. “If you don’t save me some marshmallows you know I’ll cut you right?”

“I could guess.” Darcy has a sweet tooth a mile wide and twenty thousand leagues deep. “Don’t I always share?”

“You didn’t share the mandelbrot that time.”

“My mother made that for me. Special. For my birthday.” He points out. He doesn’t share that shit. He only gets it on his birthday and Rosh Hashanah. It’s practically sacred. “She shipped it overnight from Florida.”

“And you brought it to school and flaunted it in my face.”

“It was my _birthday_.”

“It was home-made chocolate chip mandelbrot, Barnes. Everything else is irrelevant.” She looks back at the letter. “You should send your captain some.”

“I don’t actually know how to make it. I just wait for my mom to send it to me.”

“And she never sent it to you when you were overseas?”

“The High Holy Days,” he says. “Also my birthday. It’s like you don’t listen.”

“I listen. I just refuse to accept. The only kosher bakery in the city that used to make good ones closed down two years ago and I’ve been going through terrible withdrawals. Terrible I say.”

He digs in his pocket for his cell phone and puts it one the couch between them. “You wanna call my mother and ask for the recipie? Be my guest.”

“Kay.” Darcy says, snatching up the phone. Bucky gapes at her. He’d been kidding.

“You are not calling her.”

She scrolls through his contacts one-handed. “Oh I absolutely am.” She hits a button with her thumb then puts the phone to her ear and smiles. “Hi, Mrs. Barnes. This is Darcy Lewis. I’m a friend of your son.”

Horror floods every cell of Bucky’s body. _Darcy_ is talking to his _mom_. “Hang up.”

She holds up her hand, right in his face. “Mhm. Everything’s great. Mhm. He looks good, tired but you know us teachers.” She laughs. Oh sweet leaping fuck this is a nightmare. “Exactly. Anyway, I was just wondering if you had that mandelbrot recipe handy. Bucky’s got a friend overseas he wants to send a care package to. It’s not a secret is it?”

“Seriously hang up.”

“I don’t know much about his friend. Maybe? He didn’t say. Mhm. Yeah I’ve got a pen. Thanks so much Winifred.”

Darcy is calling his mother by her first name. This is hell. He’s in actual fucking hell. See if he ever asks for help again. 

She flips over his letter and begins writing on the back of it. Like he wasn’t planning on sending that or anything. The fucking fuck? She makes little humming noises as his mother talks to her and laughs every so often. So far the whole thing seems to be going better than his average conversation with his mother and Bucky wonders how this became his life.

After about three minutes Darcy says, “This is great. Thanks so much, Winifred. I’m going to text you my number from his phone. You should call me whenever. Mhm. All right. Talk to you later. Bye.” 

She takes the phone from her ear and holds it out. Bucky just gawks at her. She shakes it at him until he takes it.

“You wrote on my letter.”

"And now your captain will have the recipe. I'll give it back after the bell rings. I gotta make a copy." She sticks the pen back in her hair. "I think he'll dig it."

"I think you're crazy."

"It's possible. I do teach high school. I'm pretty sure insanity is prequisite for the job." She hops up and heads for the door of the break-room. "I'll swing by with this after bus call." And then she's gone. It's a cleaner exit than some of the spec ops guys hes worked with could make.

Bucky sits in the empty break-room for a long minute, just looking at his phone. He considers calling his mother and apologizing but doesn't. That would start a conversation he doesn't want to have about how he's doing and if he's reconsidered talking to Tony about that prosthetic he keeps offering and if he's seeing anyone and how he's sleeping so just no. 

He also doesn't have time for it before his next class starts. His mother knows he's okay. Darcy just told her. That's enough right? Yeah. Right. 

True to her word, Darcy drops by after bus call with the letter and deposits in on his desk. She rests her hip against the fake wood and thin metal and says "I think you should send him a picture."

"What?"

"Captain Penpal. You should take a selfie, print it out and send it to him. This isn't World War II. You don't have to imagine what your correspondant looks like anymore." She raps her knuckles on the desk. "It'll be nice. He'll know who he's talking to."

"Should I just put that in with the cookies?"

"I've been thinking about that. Send this letter today, then make the cookies and send them next time. Hence the picture. Every campaign takes stages."

He lifts his left eyebrow at her. "I'm campaigning now."

"For the elected position of not-a-douchebag, yes. Here give me your phone. I'll take it."

"You are never touching my phone ever again."

She sticks her tongue out at him and straight up flounces out of the room. It's a nice move, one of her best. 

Bucky sends the letter as is - corrections, recipe and all. It gives it character. He does prints out a black and white photo of himself off the school website and slip it into the envelope anyway. There's no way Darcy can know if he doesn't do it but she will ask and he doesn't like to lie or let people down. Also, he writes his return address on the envelope this time. 

He doesn't just need this drama mixing with his work-life anymore.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know how much I'll be able to write this summer but I'm sure trying! This is unbeta'd but I figured you'd want it sooner and imperfect rather than later and perfect.

Natasha shows up at his apartment on Thanksgiving morning with bag of groceries, bagels, coffee and his mail. He should never have let her housesit last summer when he went to visit his mother in Boca. She made a copy of all his keys including his mailbox key and has used them shamelessly ever since. 

She is grinning at him. Well, she's smirking, which is just as dangerous.

“You have a letter post-marked from far far away,” Natasha declares, holding up a white envelope. “It’s addressed to Sergeant James B. Barnes.” She taps it against her lower lip. “I wonder who it could be from.”

They have one week off and she’s using it to torment him at the ungodly hour of ten in the morning. “You’re a monster.”

She shoves the bagels at him. “You love me.”

“The one doesn’t exclude the other,” he declares. 

“You going to let me in or are we going to read this here in the hallway?”

“Do you have the turkey in that bag?” 

“Yeah, Clint is like half an hour behind me. He’ll be here to cook soon. And I talked to Darcy, she’s coming too.”

“Jane?” he asks, because where Darcy goes, Jane follows and vice versa. He needs to know if he’s going to have to take a Klonopin for the number of people in his apartment or not. 

“Jane’s in Norway for the break to meet Thor’s family, well, besides, Loki. Did you know they’re minor nobility?” Natasha asks as she opens his fridge and begins unloading her bags.

“Yeah.” Laufeyson likes to bring it up in the Teachers Lounge every time the kids do Shakespeare, King Lear especially. “Hey, you guys know I don’t have a kitchen table right?” he says, stepping back to let her in.

“But you have an oven that works which is more than the rest of us can say so you’re our de facto host. Congrats.” She grins at him and marches undeterred into the kitchen. She dumps the mail on the counter.

“I’m honored.”

“You should be. So.” She hops up onto a stool at his breakfast bar, the closest thing he has to a kitchen table. “What did the good Captain have to say?”

Bucky sighs and looks down at at the letter in his hands. The envelope is soft on the edges, handled and worn but it’s still sealed tight. Bucky’s probably traveled to some of the same bases this letter has passed through on it’s way home.

When he opens the envelope, a picture falls out. There are a group of men in the picture, sitting on a tank that Bucky knew the name of once upon a time. He lost those specs in the IED attack that took his arm with a bonus in the head trauma that should’ve left him a vegetable but really just took away his ability to remembers his students names without his carefully organized seating chart and how to assemble a rifle in forty-five seconds or less. Scanning the picture from right to left there’s a handsome black guy, a cute Japanese guy, a guy in a super douchey bowler hat to go with a barely-regulation mustache and a brick shithouse of a guy who is the kind of white-bread, goyisha gorgeous that would make his mother’s heart stop. All of them are wearing t-shirts and desert fatigue pants, no ranks visible and only some of them have their doglegs outside their shirts.

“He sent you a picture?” Natasha doesn’t do grabby hands, she’s far too dignified. However they’re implied in her tone.

He passes it over. “Yeah.”

“Nice,” Natasha hums, nodding. “Which one is he?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t read the letter yet.” Bucky replies but deep down, he knows. It’s the one who looks like a young Robert Redford, circa Butch and Sundance. He knows because he’s gotten used to the universe laughing at him and this would be perfect, for the most beautiful man he’s ever met to be someone he’s only written a letter to, for him to still be in the military, and probably straight and a Republican if his experience with crushing on this particular type is anything to go by. 

He’s struck again, when he unfolds it, but how _pretty_ Steve’s handwriting is. It curls and flows over the page like art. He stares at the smooth lines for a moment before he even starts to read.

**Bucky,**

**That’s a great nickname. You’ll have to tell me where you got it sometime. It’s great to put a face to the name and I have to say is that your face fits your name, all of them, Sergeant.**

**I thought I’d return the favor and send you a picture of me. Left to right are me, Dum-Dum Dugan, Jim Morita, and Gabe Jones. These guys are on my squad and are my closest friends. They’re basically my brothers which is nice because I’m an only child. I’m jealous that you get two sisters, even if they are in Oregon. I always wanted one.**

**I actually can’t tell you much about what we do. We sometimes work with the other branches but mostly we do what we need to in order to do the most good with the least casualties. It’s pretty hands on so I guess you’d call us SpecOps but none of us went to through any specialized training. We’re just a group who have a set of useful skills who work well together that the Army decided to lump together for their own purposes.**

**We’ve been in country for a long time though so getting letters is kind of great. I can’t even remember the last time we had access to the internet for recreation for more than fifteen minutes at a stretch. That’s okay for me, I don’t really have anyone back home but some of the guys have partners, kids, parents and want to stay in touch. We’ve got sat-phones but that’s limited too and its not as good as Skype.**

**I’m sure you remember what deployment’s like. It’s great except when for how it really isn’t so I love hearing about your students. You’ll have to take pictures of the trebuchet contest. It sounds awesome. Let me know who wins and how far the farthest one gets, all that.**

**Anyway, I’m fairly sure I’ve taken up enough of your time rambling. It was good to hear from you, Bucky. I hope you’ll keep in touch. It’s always good to hear from home.**

**Happy Thanksgiving,  
** Capt. Steve Rogers  
107th Infantry Regimine 

**P.S. I almost forgot. Thanks for the cookie recipe. We don’t have any of the stuff to make it here but Morita typed it up and emailed it home to his wife and told me she and the kids(they’ve got twin girls - they’re six) made a batch. Azumi said it came out a little gooey but still delicious. Is there a trick to it because the ones she found online looked different than the ones that she made? Don’t stress if you don’t know but if it is an incentive, I’ve been ordered to tell you that the whole team’s curious what the secret is.**

**Thanks,  
Steve**

**P.P.S. I really didn’t mean to do another one of these but I forgot. Um. This is my email address. Like I said, internet access is limited but this way you can send us pictures easier when your class has their competition.**

**I’m really stopping now.  
Steve **

“You’re grinning like a total idiot,” Clint says and Bucky looks up from the letter. He totally didn’t hear Clint come in. He blinks a few times. Clint’s up to his elbows in turkey guts in his sink. How did this happen? How is this his life?

“What?”

“Is that from the Captain?”

“What?”

“Oh man, it is? That’s fantastic. Nat told me about him. Is he charming? Is he going to sweep you off the factory floor and carry you out like Richard Gere?”

“That was the Navy, Clint and I work in a school.”

“Whatever. You could totally pass for early 80s Debra Winger in a pinch if you had to,” Clint dismisses. “Good letter though, eh? Man, no one writes letters any more.”

Bucky holds up the letter. “Pretty sure this is still called a letter, Barton.”

Clint lifted an eyebrow at him. “Don’t be an ass when I hold your gizzard in my hands.”

“Do I want to know what a gizzard is?”

“It’s actually the part of the bird that like grinds up their food with stones and shit because their digestive system is evolutionarily lacking, which, you think that after a few billion years they’d have evolved past that since dinosaurs had them too.”

“Do not let him start talking about a turkey version of Jurassic Park,” Natasha calls from his living room. He didn’t see her move either.

“It would be amazing. If I got backing and could film it I’d call it Ben Franklin’s Revenge.”

Bucky takes a few cautious steps away from Clint, the raw turkey, and the sink. “You are a little too into Thanksgiving for me.”

“I’m from Iowa, man. We got Christmas, Easter, and Thanksgiving. That’s it. Those were our holidays. I mean kinda Halloween but not really because no one in the trailer park gave out decent candy and our costumes were shit. Thanksgiving though, places gave away entire fucking turkeys.”

Places, Bucky knows, meaning food pantries. Clint never talks much about his childhood but over the years he’s shared enough for Bucky to know it’s the reason he went into social work. For the last few years he’s been working his way up the ladder at Sisters of Mercy Men’s Shelter. He started as an intern and has scrabbled all the way up to assistant director. Clint’s done a lot to turn it around from the pit the place had been during the months Bucky lived there before Natasha found him. 

Well. 

Found is generous. Clint called her, Bucky’s sure of it although neither of them has confirmed it even after five years. Bucky and Nat gone to college together, before she and Clint ever met, and they'd gone their separate ways after graduation. Clint must have recognized his name from her stories because less than two weeks into his stay at Sisters of Mercy, Nat had just appeared, like an avenging angel. She’d been the one to kick his ass back into shape when his mom and Becca and Tony Stark couldn’t(and wouldn’t).

“Tell me you don’t eat the gizzard at least.” 

“Some people do, not me personally, but Lucky’s going to love it.”

“You shouldn’t give that dog half the things you do. It’s going to die of food poisoning.”

“We have cast-iron stomachs, Barnes. Don’t doubt us. Now shoo.”

Bucky grabs a beer out of the fridge and joins Natasha on the couch. He hands her the letter because she’s going to read it anyway eventually and leans his head on her shoulder. She runs her fingers through his hair with one hand and holds the letter with the other.

“He likes you,” she sings-songs.

“He doesn’t.”

“He gave you his personal email, James, not his dot-gov one. He likes you. We both know he might as well have scribbled his number on your arm in Sharpie.”

Bucky snorts and leans into her touch and keeps his eyes fixed on the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. He loves the balloons and yeah, the performance numbers too. Not so much the celebrities but the peeks at the Broadway musicals they can’t afford to attend without Tony’s help is great. 

Of course as soon as he gets comfortable, his buzzer goes off and Darcy’s voice comes through his intercom. “Let me in, asshole. It’s freezing out here!”

Nat chuckles and shoves Bucky to his feet so buzz her up. She erupts into his closet of an apartment three minutes later laden with boxes from her favorite bakery that have to be pies, bless her soul, and a big smile. “I come bearing gifts.”

“Considering you’re invading my inner sanctum, you should.”

“Pie?” Clint calls from the kitchen.

“Apple, pumpkin, and chocolate for the heathen.”

“I am not a heathen,”Bucky grumps. “I like chocolate okay?”

“Did you bring Lucky?” Darcy asks as she disappears into the kitchen.

“Barnes’ building is a no-pet zone. Had to leave him at my place. He’s cool though. I left the Kansas City game on for him.”

“Lame! Where’s their holiday spirit?”

“In the basement apartment with the terrible B.O. and poor management skills that make my super such a joy to be around?” Bucky offers. The building superintendent, Mr. Schmidt, is a grade A asshole and a terrible super and Bucky is pretty sure he’s a former Nazi. Schmidt is ancient, German which isn’t a problem in and of itself. Bucky tries not to stereotype people and he actually spent nine months stationed in Munich. He really liked it there. But Schmidt has refused to fill any of his maintenance requests since he put up his mezuzah and Bucky is pretty sure he heard the guy call him the K word under his breath once. 

“Sounds like he needs a life coach,” Darcy observes.

“Or just a life,” Clint counters. 

“Lewis, Captain America wrote our boy back. He mentioned the cookies.”

“Oh my god really?” Darcy laughs. “That’s so great. Can I see?”

“Just read it aloud,” Bucky sighs. “Clint’s going to want to read it too, aren’t you?”

“I’m deaf, you know.”

“You’ve got your ears in.” Bucky shouts, holding up his middle finger. “And you can see this can’t you?”

Darcy does a dramatic reading of Steve’s letter that is over the top ridiculous with color commentary but it makes him smile. He takes pictures of them on his phone while they do because Natasha laughing with her whole body and Clint draped across his floor like like a very sassy and obnoxious cat (or just a cat) are precious commodities.

He thinks he’ll send some of the pictures to Steve when he emails him. Pictures from Thanksgiving will be good taste of home right? He pockets his phone as they settle around the living room. He certainly hopes so.

He’ll ask his mom about the mandelbrot when he calls her later to wish her happy Thanksgiving. It’s good. It’ll give them something to talk about.


End file.
